Ask The Pastors Featuring Travis Waltner

Hey crew, it's Adam. I'm a husband, a father, a pastor, a follower of Jesus who, just like you, is trying to learn what it looks like to fully live and follow Jesus in the middle of real life. It is one thing to be someone on Sundays, but what about Monday through Saturday? And so here, we're gonna talk about faith and making a difference in the messy, ordinary moments where it's often the hardest to live out. Some weeks, I'll share what God is teaching me. Other weeks, I'll sit down with leaders, pastors, athletes, friends. There's no fluff, just encouragement and truth for your life between Sundays. I'm so glad you're here. Well, hey crew. Welcome back to Life Between Sundays. I feel like it has just been a hot minute since we've been on the podcast. It feels like a long time ago since we had the last episode. We took the 4th of July off. Adam and I were both out of office for the week and I would just say the week of the 4th of July is just the 4th of July in general. It's the best holiday of the year, the best. This week and the week after Christmas, I feel like is the two weeks of the year where you don't remember what you do for a living,

what day it is, your first name, and it's the best. It's amazing, and I would argue this week even better than the week after Christmas. Yeah, and I struggle to unplug, but for some reason, those two weeks, I'm like, yeah, literally, I think I told you, can you please just take off that whole week? I know, you're like, I'm gonna be gone, so I was like, maybe you should just be gone. It's awesome. No, it was amazing. So on the 4th, is there specific things that you do on the 4th? This year on the 4th, well, every year since I've been little, we have a lake cabin at Poncet, what my parents do, so we went up there and we hang out on the boat, just grill out. I heard you're a champion now. Oh yeah, I have a gold medal at my house. I am a champion. I won the 4th of July 5K, so I am. That's incredible. I love that you told me, you're like, I'm just gonna run this, and then halfway through, you're like, I'm actually kind of doing well, and then you're like, I'm actually leading right now. Okay, this was a very, very low-key 5K. This is not like a legit. Don't share that part, yeah, we'll edit that part out. It was pretty low-key 5K, but I started,

I'm like, I'm just doing this for fun. This is just gonna be a nice little jog through the park, through the state park. It's the 4th of July, I'm just relaxing, celebrating our country. But then, yeah, I got up to the front, and I'm like, okay, screw it, I'm winning this thing now, because I'm all the way at the front. I might as well just finish strong, and I ended up winning! It's perfect, it's amazing. So it was great, I got my medal, it's hanging up in my room right now. I love it. I worked the entire weekend. That's fantastic. So everyone can know I was a champ. That's great, I love it. What was your highlight? Highlight for me, the 4th of July's always been a big thing for me, too. This year, we fished, me and two of my sons, which was awesome, and we shot off a whole bunch of fireworks. I'm definitely a pyro. Every year, my mom, it's the one time a year that I'm like, mom, okay, you need to chill out. And if you listen to this Nancy Weber, she is, she's convinced that we're all gonna die because of how I shoot off fireworks.

I am totally safe. We only had fireworks shoot back at us several times, so. Do you guys do the big artillery shell ones, or just kind of the small little like? Yeah, yeah, no, we do the artillery shells, and then some of the bigger box stuff, and several of them, not my fault, tipped over and shot towards us. This year? Don't worry about it, it's totally fine and safe, so. See, that's what stresses me out about fireworks, because it's like, there is someone who's going to lose a finger. Like, if those tubes things flip sideways, that's happened to us before. We put it on our dock, and it tipped right over, shot right towards everyone that was watching the fireworks at the cabin. It's like, okay, this could literally end some point. We can't hang on to the 4th of July. No, I get stressed with the fireworks. I actually don't really. I like the little ones, like the little adult snaps, and like the roman candles and stuff. You're great. Yeah, but we're back, we're back, ready to rock. This week, you had Travis Waltner on. Yeah, and so Travis Waltner, he just celebrated his 15th year at the church, which I did not realize until during the recording.

I don't know what that says, but Travis, just to honor him, if there's ever been a message that I've preached that has impacted anybody who's listening, that's kudos to Travis. He literally helps me with the message every single week. He's amazing, he is the number two here at Embrace, and I'm just endlessly grateful for him. And they're kind of like an old married couple at this point. I mean, literally, he's been here 15 years. First full-time hire at the church was Travis. So this episode, though, I brought him with because we take questions on my Instagram. By the way, if you don't follow me, Adam A. Weber, and from time to time, we'll drop in a question box where any question is welcome, so. You can submit them on Instagram, DM them, or even email adam at imembrace.com. And we'll find it, yeah, so do that. But these questions were harder questions, and there's no. nobody that I respect more than Travis. And so we answered a whole bunch of different questions. We talked about dinosaurs and where they fit in. Travis, I just think he just gives such a great answer. We talked about the purpose of prayer, if God's all-knowing and all in control, why do we pray? We talked about the difference between killing and murder, which again, I just thought his answers were really, really great. So you're gonna enjoy this.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy. Okay, so today we are doing Ask a Pastor, and it's specifically is asking me. So I post on my Instagram. By the way, if you don't follow me, Adam A. Weber, from time to time, we'll drop a question box on there. And any question that you wanna ask me, any question that you wanna ask a pastor, you can drop it on in. What's nice about this though, is I'm kinda passing the buck to you, because there's a group of questions that came in and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's not an easy question to answer. So I- So you invited me? I put you on the spot. And what I didn't know, until right now, today is 15 years of working at Embrace. And I didn't know that until 15 minutes ago. When someone- Someone told you, didn't they? Yeah, our HR software notified everybody it was my 15th year. Gosh. And they were telling me, I was like, I had no idea it was my 15th year. Can we make sure to get him a plaque, a medal? Someone asked you, what was your favorite moment,

or memory, in those 15 years? It was about eight or nine years ago. You took four weeks off and it was the best time ever. He was just gone. It was great. It was like a mini sabbatical and I loved every second of it. I worked the entire thing, but it was like a sabbatical. So, okay, so 15 years. Awesome. Honestly, I'm so grateful for you, just the impact that you've had on me, our church, everything. I just was talking with someone and they said, our Aaron judge on staff, this is Rick Milmer, by the way, you know, who is that player that you wouldn't want to lose? And he's like, he's like, I think Walton is our Aaron judge. That's nice of him. I hate the Yankees, but that's nice of him. That's great. I was like, what about this guy? Am I Aaron? You mean like George Steinbrenner? Well, he's dead, isn't he now? He died? I don't know, but that's great. Okay, so I'm going to hop into these questions and they are not softball questions. First question, I feel like this is right up your alley.

Can we say, first off, I have not been prepped on these questions. That's a good word. No prep whatsoever, which I appreciate, and we'll have to hold all those answers against you. So if there's anything that we later figure out is internet forever, it's going to be great. Okay, first question. My son is obsessed with dinosaurs. How do I explain how they fit in with the biblical timeline? That's a very good question. So I've shared many times the staff jokes, because I always talk about, oh, when I was a kid, I doubted. I had all these doubts, but I did add all these doubts as a kid. And I asked that same question quite often. I had this book of dinosaurs and I was like, I would go to church and I liked church, but I just, I didn't understand how, really the deeper question is how science and the Bible, especially the timelines jive together. I'm probably not going to give you a straightforward answer. So there's probably two thoughts to this. There is some Christians that believe that the earth is old and the dinosaurs were on the earth at the time. And then there was other Christians that believe in a young earth.

So if you look at the genealogies in the Bible, it says the Bible, basically that the world's roughly like 6,000 to 6,500 years old. Fact check me on that. I maybe got the dates wrong there. And so some people are very rigid that the earth is 6,500 years old. And others would say like, no, that's, you know, there's time in there. So I'm pretty, I use this word agnostic on that. I don't know how old the earth is. If it is 6,500 years old, that means that all the dinosaurs probably died in the flood and all the apparent age that we see on the earth is from effects from the flood. That's what like young earth creationists would say. And could that be possible? Yeah, that could be possible. I wasn't around. I've been at Embrace for 15 years, but I haven't been on the world for 6,500. So that is possible. I tend to believe that, and I've shared this. He's sharing us, he's showing us his cards here. This is good. Yeah, I share, I tend to believe, and I shared this before, the Bible's purpose is not to be a scientific document. It is not a science book.

And honestly, the people that wrote, especially the Old Testament, they wouldn't have even thought necessarily in scientific terms. Instead of trying to tell you what things are made of, they're trying to tell you what things mean. So what does creation mean? What does this mean for me? What is God trying to communicate to us? And so I tend to think it's like, science, it seems like that the early. The world is much older than we, uh, than we think. And so, um, even at the beginning it says, uh, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Well, what is that? That could be, is that a, is that in a moment? Is that in a billion years? Is that through a big bang or not a big bang? I feel like there's a lot of room in there, uh, to, to, to decide. So some would say there's not room though. Yeah. More just to highlight that. Yeah. More if you're, I don't mean this negatively, but if you're more a young earth creationist and be a bit more fundamentalist, believe just very literally what the, what the Bible is saying is very literally true. And there's no imagery or poetic nature to Genesis one. Yeah. They would say, no, there is no room for that. And I, I just, I think that's probably not a good stance to take. You can, you can believe, you can believe it's 6,500 years old, but I would just say, be open to the fact that the Bible, the Bible can be a hundred percent true in God, breathe in divine, and still have just images, stick language at the beginning, poetic language at the beginning to help us understand what creation means more

than what it's, it's made made of. Correct me if you, if you think differently for me, that, that, that is not a hinge point of my faith. You know, my hinge point is the cross, the literal cross and the literal empty tomb and Jesus. Yeah. Well, and I think a problem people run into, and I've seen this with some young earth creationists is they, they create that as the hinge pin, the linchpin or whatever it, I'm trying to say here. And, and then when that falls, the whole house of cards falls for them. And it's like, see, yeah, our, our faith is not based on how old the earth is or how dinosaurs it is. The, the, the linchpin is Jesus. And Paul even says that is is if Christ is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain. So that is the linchpin. If Christ was not raised from the dead, that, that does take the whole closing words for that kid that that's asking about that. Uh, don't, yeah, don't yet. You can. Great question. First off, great question. Explore science. Science can fit into our worldview of the Bible. I have not encountered anything in science that does not. There are some amazing Stephen Meyer. There's some of these amazing guys that are great scientists and strong believers. They don't have, they can coexist together. Okay. Next question. I have some thoughts on this. What are some key takeaways or lessons learned while reading genealogy sections in the Bible? I'll go first on that. For me, uh, to start a Matthew, a gospel, Matthew lays out the lineage of Jesus. Jesus. And for me, the thing that just ministers to me big time is that Rahab, a prostitute and Bathsheba, uh, the, you know, the gal that David had an affair with are named in the lineage of Jesus.

Several things for my sisters in Christ. I think it's pretty cool that women are mentioned, uh, in the lineage of Jesus. And then for all of us broken, messy human beings, uh, that's pretty encouraging. Like, just like who is in the line. And then for, for me, so there's that part that's powerful. And then just the line of David and just the promises that the old Testament that are fulfilled in Jesus. Uh, for me, those are the things that I would say stick out the greatest to me. Yeah. I probably don't have a lot to add to what you just said. Those are the things I was thinking of. I think it's, I mean, you're like, what is all this stuff? We do the same thing today. Ancestry.com. You go on and you're trying to get your lineage back to so-and-so. There's just kind of a, a cool nature about like, where did we come from? And that was what the Jewish people were doing. They were just trying to remember where they, they came from. And so when you saw back to these men of God, these women of God, it just gave them a sense of their history, a sense of their belonging in the world. Yeah. I even think there's some, there's some cool aspects. I think that the tribes of Israel are often forgotten by a lot of Christians. And I think there's such richness and learning more about the old Testament and okay, who is a child of who. And I think a lot of times it can be glossed over, but there's a lot of really powerful images. Um, I mean, just even Jacob being so broken and messy and him, whatever. So there's just a lot of cool things there. I thought that was awesome. Okay. Next question. If God has a perfect plan for us, what is the purpose of prayer to change circumstances? We might get a different answer from these two. Um, so, so I believe this is where some of our theology will show. Yeah. So I,

so it was interesting. Brian actually talked about this in his last message a little bit. And he said, he talked about the persistent widow who persistently prayed. And he said our persistence isn't to change God's mind. Our persistence has showed that we trust him. So I think that's something that like the persistence in prayer is to, to, to show that we trust him. I, I believe that oftentimes in the Bible and correct me if I'm a heretic right here, Adam, You have to believe two things that don't always jive together, you know? And I think if you don't do that, you will just become, you will start to fall on one side of theology or another side of theology and you're going to miss something in the middle. So in this, God is sovereign. He knows what's going to happen. He is in complete control. Also we're told you don't have, cause you don't ask. You need to be persistent in your prayers, that God is partnering with us to do, he's partnering with us in our actions, but also in our prayers for healing and for the move of God. Now, do those completely make sense together? It's like, it's kind of hard to figure out outside of our moment right here, but you can't believe one over the other. You can't be super sovereignty of God and be like, my prayers don't matter. It's like, no, the Bible says your prayers do matter. And then you can't be, as someone said, I got to pray, I got to pray because if I don't, God's not going to move. It's like, no, you have to believe both. And in that tension, we find a beautiful truth. You use that, that summed it up perfectly.

Thank you. Cause I, we want to go one way or the other. And oftentimes, uh, you know, uh, you know, free will versus predestination. It's one way or the other. I think, and I always joke that when you actually read into Kelvin, who's predestination and Wesley free will, they sound more similar than like when you actually start digging into it, you're like, didn't the other guy just say the same exact thing? So I, I think there's so much similarities and I think those two things are huge. The other thing that I would say is prayer often more than anything, it ends up changing us. It constantly changes our plans, our agenda, what we think God's will is, uh, on the day to day basis. And so I think that's, that's huge. One last thing. And when I was in seminary, uh, we had a guy come and speak and he said, uh, um, grow maturity in Christian life is being able to hold on to paradox and he was trying to say that there's, there's things that we, that are, that are both true and we can't understand them, but we hold on to both of them and we don't give away one way. It's in that paradox that we actually see the deeper, the deeper beauty of God. That's great. Okay. Uh, what do you think is the funniest verse in the Bible? I have, I have one. I had to research just a baldy, the bald guy, right? Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. Second Kings, Elisha is made fun of, uh, and he's called Baldy and then a bear comes out in mall. It's little boys. It's boys that are, that are harassed, harassed in Elisha.

And then the boys get attacked and mauled. It says mauled by the bears. Yeah. And they deserved it, man. You don't make fun of a ball. Don't make fun of a ball guy. What's ridiculous. Hey, you think we'd be bald if we had to? It's not. I think so. Speaking of that, I had a guy come up to me at embrace. He said, uh, cause I mentioned, um, you know, just, uh, your comb over and bald in it. And he's like, Hey, instead of, instead of this is a true story, I'm not going to say the name. He said, I decided to go all in. You know, I was talking about the comb over or whatever. And he said, you said to buzz it. Well, I did the opposite. I flew to Turkey and he's getting a, he's getting a hair transplant. I'm like, how about that? Can I call it your sister on this podcast right now? You can go for it. Yeah. I met, I saw your sister the other day and your sister likes to speak truth. She told me, she's like, and she was dead serious. She's like, you look like Caillou. And I'm like, Caillou does the little bratty cartoon kid and I'm like, and she was dead. So she was like, no, I was watching you on screen. It just hit me. You look like Caillou.

And I was like, I was like, and then she was trying to tell me Caillou is not bad looking. I'm like, Oh, come on. That's not a compliment. Yeah. Not a compliment. No. Okay. Thanks Becca. Yeah. Seriously. Before we go any further, there are just some awesome partners who make life between Sundays possible. Adam, will you share who our partners are? Yeah. Our partners. I'm so proud of the partners that we have. Our first partner is First Interstate Bank. I've been doing my own personal banking there since 2007. That's a long time. That's a long time. And I cannot say enough about them. Their mission is to help people and their money work better together. They have over 300 locations throughout 14 different states from Arizona to Colorado, Washington state to the great state of South Dakota. If you are looking for a bank for you or for your business, look no further than First Interstate Bank. FirstInterstateBank.com. I just absolutely cannot say enough about them. I just love them through and through and through. Our second partner is Vernity Mitsubishi.

Vernity is a growing employee owned faith based company that strives to deliver dreams and transform lives. And their goal is excellence in everything that they do. Kind of funny. I was up in Northeast South Dakota last week and a person met me that I didn't know. And they just said, hey, my son works at Vernity. and he absolutely loves it and whatever. I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. And I was just so proud to like, even like be like, gosh, Vernity is incredible. And so if you are looking for a vehicle of any kind, literally a tractor, a boat, a snow mobile, like you name it, they're going to, they're going to have it look no further than vernit.com. Go there. You won't regret it. I mean, I just can't say enough about the work that they do. They're not just going to sell you an awesome, awesome vehicle. They are constantly doing things throughout our community that just make, honestly, make no sense whatsoever. So go check out vernity.com. Okay. Next question. I'll let you just handle this all year. We want to, is there a difference between killing and murder and is it okay for God to murder? And this is asked by a teen. So there, yeah, I mean, deaf by definition, there's a difference between killing and murder. Murder would be premeditated you know, premeditated. Of taking a life. Killing is typically, it can be not premeditated or in the act of war or self defense. Murder would probably be the malicious attempt. The malicious attempt. Yeah. Yeah. And so killing would, yeah, it would typically like in the idea of like war or self defense or an accident would be more of worth killing. And, and, um, is it okay for God to murder? Well, I just want to say, um, so I'm so glad that I'm not the only person on this episode. So, um, so I mean when it says thou shall not kill, it's thou shall not murder. So it is definitely speaking towards that malicious intent for murder. I do think in general as Christians, we shouldn't want to kill or murder even something like war. It's like once you enter into war stuff and I'm not trying to make a judgment on anything, it's just hard to follow God. You know, it's hard to do that. Right. And that's why the, I mean, I think Christians throughout history would have been like, you know, trying to reduce war as much as possible because you just create situations where you're going to murder or going to kill. Is it okay for God to murder? So no, not murder, you know, like, like murder would be this malicious attempt, you know, is it, is it okay to,

for God to take life? You, you correct me. I mean, this is where this is, this is difficult. Like, um, but if you think of God is not just some grandpa in the sky, but God is the foundation of all reality that we have our breath by his being, we have our life by his being. He can, he can take and give as he, as he feels fit, as he feels well. Now, even in that at his base, he is good. Like we, we believe God is his truth, his goodness and his beauty. So even in his, his, if he feels like it's right to take a life, he's doing it for good means for beautiful means towards, towards an end that he has in store. And we don't, we don't, I am a hundred percent in agreement with that. And we don't like that answer because we, I feel like we equal ourselves with God or we try to rationalize, like my thoughts are the same as God's thoughts. And it's like, Oh, probably not or no. And so I think there's just like the, the greatness of when I, when I'm on a cruise ship and I'm in the ocean, I'm reminded, Oh, I am not God. Yeah. Like, uh, when I stand at like before I'm not like flying through the Rockies, like a couple of weeks back, I'm like, it is clear that I'm not God. And I think just those, those images, like those reminders, but then again, knowing that God is love, that God is truth. Well, that's an, any of this stuff, you always remember he's good. Yeah. He's good. Like anything he does is good. I mean, the last is a three or four chapters of Job. If you want to see God say, Hey, you're not me. That, I mean, those are good chapters to, to read, but it's a great question. It's a really great question. Okay. I'm going to go, uh, let's go. Let's get, let's get through a few more questions. So what are the most common mistakes people make when interpreting scripture? What are the most common mistakes people make when interpreting scripture? Um, I mean, first is confirmation, confirmation bias, where you go to scripture, wanting to find a certain answer. So good. And, and so you, you can find it if you want to go, it's like, man, I, I want to leave my spouse. I'm going to go look at David. She, I don't know what it is, but literally yesterday I saw an example and I'm not going to share the specific example. I was just like, Oh, my cherry picking. Yeah. I was like, Oh, you're, you're literally, you're not even quoting the whole verse. You're quoting a half of the verse. It's really, that's so good. Yeah. And I think that's even a separate one is, is, is, um, not, not reading, just reading the verse and not the verses. What is the context of it? Yeah. What is the verses around that? And what is, what is the rest of the Bible saying? I mean, something we've talked, we actually talked about this quite a bit lately. It's like,

are you, are you saved by faith alone? by works. It's like, well, yeah, I mean, you see over and over, it's faith alone, but also like James says, works are really important. And so you have to read kind of the whole breadth of scripture to get a, a full idea of what it says. That's so good. Not even just the context of within that story, but okay. That story, that verse in the context of all scripture. Yep. Any other mistakes that you see are common? Well, so I don't know if this is the most common, but I think you got to remember what type of, what type of book you're reading. So the Bible isn't a book, it is 66 books. And so you have some historical books, you have poetic books, you have revelatory books, you have the letters. And so they, they all take a bit of a different, so a different jive. And I think in the old, the old Testament that there's a lot of things people do that are bad and they're supposed to be bad. It isn't because David did this, that this is good. Like, you know, and so, so I think that's another thing that people make a mistake on. Another one that comes to mind for me is listening to a pastor who is quite radical and only listening to that pastor and their view of scripture. Even recently, a friend was, uh, I, I almost could tell who they were listening to. And I was like, Hey, uh, I think you maybe, maybe don't listen to him as much anymore because it just felt like they were getting more and more radical. And I was just like, okay, that's great. Um, but yeah, just who are the voices that are interpreting scripture for you is important to ask. Another thing I feel like is getting really popular right now that wasn't, I don't think was as popular when I was in college is reading into revelation and end times. Cause we live in a little bit crazy times now. There's a lot going on, but I've just seen more and more people, especially on the internet, like trying to read into revelation and, and mapping it one for one onto what's happening now. And I don't know when the end is going to happen, but people have been doing that for a long time and they've been wrong a lot. And so if you're going to, if you're going to read into revelate, just do it very humbly, cautiously. We were told we will not know the time, the date or the place. So I feel like I read through revelation once, maybe every other year. Uh, and maybe this is wrong, but I feel like the book of revelation is a place that some Christians go to, to hide almost of not dealing with, is my life becoming more like Jesus? It's like, I'm going to study revelation. Are you forgiving your family member who hurt you? Are you loving your neighbor? I don't even know them, but I'm infatuated with revelation. So I see that. I see that as well.

It's going to often be a place that you go to, to hide. Okay. Another question. Gosh, I've been asked this one quite a few times. Why does God seem different in the old Testament than the new? Um, I, I, I don't think he's as different as you probably think he is. I think, I think, I think a lot of, and I don't mean this bad. I think a lot of Christians that they probably haven't read the old Testament very much, you know, like there's a lot of loving God in the old Testament. Like, I mean, even like God casts Adam and Eve out of the garden. You're like, Oh, he's so harsh. He did that out of love. Because if they ate of the tree of life, they would have remained in their sin forever. So he casts them out the way he deals with Jacob and Abraham and Israelites and David, and even the way David talks with. So there is a lot of loving. And also, I don't mean this bad. I don't know that you've read a lot of Jesus either. Cause like, I'm just, I'm in the gospels every day right now. I'm like, sometimes like, Whoa, Jesus. I mean, Jesus can be like, he's got some harsh things sometimes, especially to the Pharisees. But in general, he's just like, you know, he can have some really hard things to say. And so, so I, I, I don't think it's as different as you probably think. Now what they're probably talking about is the places in Joshua and those hard where, where, where God's like, Hey, you got to kill all these people. That's a whole separate thing to get into. But then I think the second thing would just be like, we, we do believe that Jesus has bridged a gap between us and God. And now we have access to God that we, that, that the people in the old Testament didn't have by his Holy spirit. And so there's a sense that we have a closeness with God. We are now called sons and daughters. The first time ever God is called father is when Jesus prays. I believe this is true. He plays Abba father. And so now we, we can call God father now. And so there is a more closeness and intimacy that we have with God because of the gap that Jesus bridged. So good. That's, I would say that same thing, even just the tenderness that you see between David and God in the Psalms, you know, just the, The honesty that he's able to approach God with, but also just the sweetness that is relationally there. And so I would, I would say the exact same thing. Yeah. I'm reading through the book of John right now. And I'm just like, Holy moly, Jesus. Yeah. Even to certain things where I'm like, how, this is what blows me away. There was something this morning and I'm like, I don't know if I've ever read that. And it's like, you've read the gospel of John a trillion times. You've most definitely read this, but it just stuck out to me in a new and

fresh way. Uh, last question I have, uh, what, what are, what, like if, if someone attends your church, um, what are three to four things that you wish that they knew? That's the last question. Someone attended your church. What's three to four things that you wish like embrace or it could be embraced, could be just a church goer in general, your four things you wish they knew. Oh, like, just like, here's, here's what I wish you would do live, whatever. Like, probably the first thing is there's no, there's no perfect church. Like, please, please. Oh, sorry. I'm going to get snarky here. Please don't go to the book of Acts and try to tell me what the perfect church should look like. I'm just telling you, people have been trying to do that for a million years and it's just not a million years, 2000 years. And like, for me, I just, I don't have time for that anymore. Like, like I, I played that game for many years. So I, I, so I have grace for it because I played that game, but I just don't have, it's like every church is different. Every church has a different calling and a mission statement and none is better than the other. And, you know, we're just trying our best to, to, to follow Jesus for me. Like, if you come to me with that heart, we can, we can work with, work with a lot. I'm struggling. What else? Um, I would just say like, uh, for me, one of those things I would say is every Sunday show up expecting God to move, uh, show up, show up five minutes early, 10 minutes early. If you're not serving that Sunday already, and just begin to pray for the people around you. Uh, just like if there's anybody to start, just start praying, pray, pray for the pastor. If you're at embrace, I'd be so grateful if you'd pray for me as you're sitting there, but just pray. And then during worship and we're, we're commanded to praise God. So this isn't like put it on the front, engage in worship, like hands raised, singing, whatever it might be, just engage. Cause you there there's Dave DeVries. I'll give him a shout out. Dave is a quiet man in our church. And yet he changes the temperature of the room just by being in it. And then even during the service, like there's something about eye on eye contact and even audibly responding. And then after in between services, looking for people to pray for, looking for people to like, just love and serve. And so that's what I would say. That's something that comes to mind for me. Yeah. The other thing that I, I thought of was, what was I going to say? Oh, so if you hear a you're never above a message, like no matter how much you've learned in the Bible, like whatever, whether it's a youth pastor upfront talking, it's a kid singing a song, like God speaks through, through everything. And so

sometimes I think it's like, we have to go deep into these deep into studying all these passages, which is great. I love all that stuff. You love all that stuff. But I, but like the simple, like I gave a message this week about humility. It's like, that's the simplest message ever, but it's like, I struggle with that. Like I, I get on my high horse. I start to think I'm like the Pharisee. And I think for like any message you hear is not below where you are at. If you go into like, man, I wish the message was just deeper. You didn't hear the message. So good. We're right now, Anderson and I, we we've been going through it little by little. It's calm thoughts for kids by Max Lucado. And it should be calm thoughts for 44 year old girl married bald bearded men. Cause it is right at me. And every, every day he'll, he'll say, dad, did you, did you need to hear that? That's what he'll ask me. I was like, man, that was right between the eyes and it was, it's written for whatever grade kid, but I I'm the same way. I'm amazed by that. I think, I think more than anything, like if you're a part of a church, know that you're a pillar of that church. And so you, you set the tone that you can carry the vision of the church. You can be the person that assumes the best that is like, Hey, like just, just a cheerleader, not turning a blind eye to honest things or questions or whatever, doing those in a really wise manner. But just, I just right now embrace is filled with so many people who just lead in the church right where they are. And they're just, it's like, it's such a refreshment and you see God do awesome things. I got a text message yesterday. There was four guys in a group chat and they're like, Hey, could we add worship to like, if I brought my guitar, could we sing before our small group? And it was just a group of non-staff talking. And I'm like, you don't have to ask for my blessing to do this. It's your guys' group. And so they're just doing their thing and whatever. And it was just so cool to even be in this text thread of a group of. volunteers in our church and I was just like, this is awesome. Yeah. You don't, you don't go to church. You are the church. You get to be a part of it. I hope these questions were helpful. These answers were helpful. Again, if you don't follow me, go to Adam A. Weber. We will do a question on my Insta stories on a regular basis. So if you see it, please ask your honest question. Have an awesome rest of your day.

Well, thank you to Travis. Thank you to Adam for answering all of those questions to all of you who wrote in. Thank you for your questions. It is so fun. Like just getting to see what people are like wrestling with and getting answers. Cause half of these, I'm like, yeah, I don't understand dinosaurs in the Bible. I just think it's so cool for me. Cause these are the questions that that Travis and I get on a regular basis, but no one else gets to hear them. And I think so often people are like, I'm the only one who thinks about stuff like this. And you're not the only one who thinks about stuff like this. And so just the ability to be able to share and give answers and even be able to acknowledge like, Hey, we don't know the answer to this specific thing. It's just really, really helpful. If you know of somebody that those questions are things that are wrestling with, please share it, text it to them, send it in an email. Specifically when a friend tells me to listen to an episode or my wife tells me it's like, I'm for sure going to listen. So I just want to encourage you to do that. Thanks again to our partners first interstate bank. I just can't say enough about them and Vernady Mitsubishi, the best of the best. Thanks so much for listening in. I think that's what we know. Have an awesome rest of your week. It's going to be a great rest of your July as well. Thanks guys.